


Shino's routine

by tothemovies (jarofactonbell)



Category: Naruto
Genre: Farmers au, M/M, just some animals and kibashino
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-06-27 12:13:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19790665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jarofactonbell/pseuds/tothemovies
Summary: Shino's routine is very simple. Set out in stone. Nothing can disrupt it -Shino’s routine is set, to the rhythm of everything natural and long-lasting around him. It is set out in stone. Nothing can disrupt it.But Inuzuka Kiba is set on disrupting his routine and consequently life.





	Shino's routine

**Author's Note:**

> did this for the naruto harvest zine! you can grab the pdf [here](https://twitter.com/harvestnaruto/status/1149790242511175680)! 
> 
> i'm always here with my kibashino agenda so hnnn,,,for laura and amber,,,,i love you both <3

Shino's routine is very simple. Set out in stone. Nothing can disrupt it. 

The rhythm of everyday keeps him in tune. Rise before the sun. Water the garden plots Mother and Father cultivate. Stash away the fermented honey wine from overnight into their brewing chambers. 

_ “Shino-chan!”  _ An unholy screech emanates from beyond the Aburame farmland, over the fence, winding around the flower plots of their neighbour Yamanaka, into the wide expanse of the ridiculously loud -

unprecedented -

blasphemous -

ridiculous -

Inuzuka.

Shino had long since added  _ Spray annoying Inuzuka in the face with high-pressured well water  _ onto his list of must be completed routine steps, and he had long since evolved from the customary sigh he reserves for the likes of loud, interruptive Inuzuka at the time where the sun hasn’t peaked over the cloud yet. 

“How mean, Shino-kun ~” Kiba whines, hanging over the fence of his property. He had been adamant on the cattle herder on not trespassing on his grounds or else the bees will come out on the defensive, and so far that promise had been barely kept. 

“Leave,” he sighs, the hostility is no longer apparent in his voice. He’s just exhausted. He just wants to tend to his bees and arrange the soil for the tulips to bloom in time for market season. 

“I’ll come by later to chat to you,” Kiba, oblivious to all things dangerous, continues to lean on his bending fence, dripping with cold well water. 

“No need,” Shino, to the temperature of the slowly thawing lake by his house, replies.

Kiba skips away, seemingly impervious to the layers of threats barely concealed in Shino’s voice.

Shino’s routine is set, to the rhythm of everything natural and long-lasting around him. It is set out in stone. Nothing can disrupt it.

But Inuzuka Kiba is set on disrupting his routine and consequently life. 

Shino scowls harder and turns off the tap.

  
  


He is tending to the bees, regulating the inner linings for the hive, cleaning out the dirt and debris the little menaces leave around. His checklist is in the inner pocket of his apron, ever present in his attire. He doesn’t need the list, per se, but it reassures him. Keeps him in check. Each box that he ticks is a step closer to him achieving his tasks and responsibilities of the day, absolving him of the guilt he accumulates before midday, of when he starts having existential crisis about how he hasn’t achieved anything and consequently spirals down a hole of regressive thinking.

It’s been a while since he moved back home, yet the thoughts have followed him home, along the dirt track winding to the Aburame home. The university suggested that he could take a break, go somewhere where it’s quieter, unwind that tension from his shoulder that he holds whenever he walks into a lecture hall.

There are too many things weighing down on the people who live today in the urban concrete world, where everything is perpetually suspended in frigid arctic climate. It is always bitter chill and hollow wind, and he misses home dearly as he gazes out onto the barren landscape of Konoha with a name that is misleading. Village amongst the leaves. The last trees are all concentrated in the small park, south of the university, and a small vegetable plot, where nothing substantial to sustenance or research can be cultivated. 

It is always winter here, the smog thick, a miasma in his lungs, and he can't see hear the cicadas at night. 

The principal allowed him leave and he took the first train back to his home, a small prefecture enclosing a lake and a field of tulips. He left here when he received a scholarship to study at Konoha, and hadn't been back since.

The clear air alone invigorated him. For the first time in years he could breathe. 

He quite forgot the forlorn string of emotions as a staple in his life, the perpetual annoyance, towers over the hedge and waves, another dog on his shoulder.

“Aburame-san!”

That train of reflective thought derailed very quickly, courtesy of a certain Inuzuka crashing upon his postmarked routine steps again. 

See, Shino’s life is dependent and structured around methodology. Rules. Lists. Priorities organised in a logical manner. 

What he has, what he sets out for himself, what he allows himself to have freedom in - it makes sense for him. It works for him. 

When Inuzuka Kiba is added upon the equation, it doesn't add up to a mathematical expression that  _ makes sense.  _

Shino is simultaneously afraid and annoyed at him, and as the Stoic Aburame Ways instilled in his core since birth, he chose to emote annoyance since day one of their introduction.

“Inuzuka-san,” he replies, as terse and as aggravated as possible.  _ I am displeased entirely with your presence and everything you stand for. Remain approximately twenty plots of agricultural produce away from me. _

“Lovely to see you too,” Kiba trills happily. “Your face is always nice to gaze upon.” He, thankfully, does not step beyond the hedge, lazing about and all over the neatly trimmed branches and leaves instead. “I kept my promise.”

Infuriating as he is, he is true to his words, as unorthodox as his thinking is. All the promises he made, he keeps.

“Congratulations. I don’t see how I can help you anymore, being as unpleasant as I am,” he shuts the door close, stepping away from the hive to allow the bees some room to recentre. 

“Talking to you is always the highlight of my day,” Kiba echoes back right away, walking in parallel to Shino’s trek to tend to his brother’s cricket cultivation farm. “Want to go somewhere together later on?”

Shino decisively takes a step back, narrowing his eyes.

“Will anyone be there?”

Kiba never once stops smiling, crossing dirtied arm sleeves behind equally messy hair, catching the sun’s glares with his back facing the horizon.

“Why, if you wanted to accompany me specifically to the lotus pier, I would be more than pleased to -”

“Inuzuka,” his voice thins. “It’s a yes or no question.”

“And I’m opening up options for you,” Kiba counters just as easily. 

Shino doesn't reply. Keeps on trekking further, surveying where Ino had put the hose and bending down to alter ones that are crooked from the agreed arrangement. 

“So meticulous, Shino-chan,” is the croon he hears. He is silent on his disapproval too, and continues to account for the hoses and water flow. 

Kiba understands the message. “If you want to come, it's by the lotus pier. There will be lanterns and flower stems in the water.” There is a bark and a stampede of feet in the distance and Kiba grunts as he catches something, whistling at the chaos.

Shino turns his head enough to gauge the situation. A few sheep had wandered off, and the two agitated sheepdogs had sprinted along their leisure strides and barked at them to return, to the success of all of them skidding down the heavy slope along the apple orchards and the Yamanakas’ orchid plots. 

At the sight of Kiba, the menagerie of animals calm down significantly, and assemble themselves in an orderly manner. Kiba pats all of the wandered ones on the top of their heads, between their ears, and herds them back up the slope, waving a lazy goodbye to Shino.

“Have a nice day, Shino-san,” he trills, before clicking his tongue to summon back his dogs.

The dogs had been sitting behind the hedge, staring at Shino attentively. They were the same ones he remembered from his past, but bigger now. 

At the whistle, they turn, and don't look back at him.  
  
  


His routine ends, as it does, exactly at 7, where he cooks dinner and eats by himself, before noting a few observations about the _kikaichu_ beetles he is looking after. 

There was a time in his life that he wished that he had less things to worry about, but it is human nature to wish for things that they don't have, because in his old home, he wishes for more tasks to finish. Life in this town is idyllic. Slow. He can breathe easily. But he can't calm his heart down, no matter the pace he is travelling in. 

This winter is long, and he has yet to see the sun.   
  
  


Nii-san rarely ever asks him to complete any chores for him, that he does not pay too much mind to the direction he is heading towards, focusing single-mindedly on the destination and the fulfilment of his objective.

It is this laser focus thinking of his that drives many friends away from him, with only Hinata, really, keeping in touch and occasionally bullying him to lunch. There is a list, always, of things he has to do, tasks he must complete, and he numerically fulfills them, leaving no space for himself or anyone else.

There are choices that he must absolute fulfill - and perhaps Inuzuka Kiba was correct, in identifying that. But it is not a matter of him not having choices, it’s simply...him not taking the choices available to him, choosing to instead limit them until his head feels that there are only so many options it can progress onto.

The Aburame clan who stays within the boundaries of this village, ringed by many evergreen plants, nature sprawling in every aspect of their home life. They welcome him back without question, without inflicting upon him the burdensome questions of ‘What’s the next step?’

This idyllic lifestyle was the one that drove him away and ironically, the same one that drew him back. He could escape this village, again and again, but he would always return to it every time he leaves.

His boots bump against the crooked fence that rings around the Inuzuka and Yugito grazing fields, giving him a start. A few animals glance up at his intrusion upon their leisure meandering and focus back to their task.

He stares quizzically at the list nii-san drew up. Torune was always weirdly specific on his beloved lists that many forgo that responsibility. Shino, full of fondness for his brother, is only here because of that and because he is too free. With so much time to waste, he has to be doing something, otherwise -

Yugito-san is climbing up the slope that winds down to the ponds where the animals can drink from. She’s accompanied by Shino’s least tolerated Inuzuka, laughing as a big white dog bounds next to them, and Akamaru barks as he spots Shino.

He has no aversion to animals, even if that animal is raised by Inuzuka Kiba. Akamaru, paws on the top of the swaying fence, bumps his large head under Shino’s extending hand, huffing gleefully as he pats back.

“Aburame-san,” Yugito jogs to him. “Here to play delivery boy for Bigger Aburame?”

“Nii-san isn’t that tall,” he rolls his eyes fondly, as the blonde landowner hands over a basket of wrapped parcels. “Thank you,” he tells her, bowing his head. 

“I know, buddy,” she waves him off. “Kiba, walk him back, will you? I’ll have a look at the sheep. We have to shear them soon. See ya around, baby Aburame.”

It is late afternoon, with the sun dropping low on the horizon. He is washed in weariness of his racing mind and Kiba saunters to the gate, smiling easily at him.

“So, will you let me walk you back?” He asks, knee bumping into the fence line.

“Akamaru’s attendance is mandatory, but he has to stay outside when we get to my home,” is his condition, as Kiba vaults over the fence, along with Akamaru’s leap, as they yip in victory and bound by his side.

Shino allows himself a break from his daily routine of checking on the beetles. Nii-san most likely have already done that for him. 

His room - and the sprawling extension, architecture of a free mind blending conventionality and freedom of creativity, had been mostly shut. He does not live in it much, besides coming back for dinner and sleeping at night.

The curtains are always still and listless. There are barely any furniture inside.

“Very,” Kiba whistles, coughing as he walks into the edge of a dining table. “Minimalistic. Uh, you city folks all live like this or is it just you?”

“Yes,” he answers solemnly. “It's also an Aburame thing.”

Kiba lifts both brows, voice climbing up a definite edge of incredulity. “It's an Aburame thing to  _ not receive vitamin D the natural and free way?!” _

He grunts, realising too late that the sentence didn't sound right, but his pride withheld, even when he was in academia, so he didn't attempt to rectify the blunder in his words.

He rises before the sun and leaves after it goes anyways. No need to move the curtains.

This - this is a break from routine. The sunset is blooming upon their faces and the sunlight is soft, peeking from behind the fluttering curtains, warming whatever sliver of skin that it lands on.

“I’m opening the damned curtains for you, I can’t do this, it’s too suffocating,” Kiba crosses the small expanse of his sitting room and slides open the curtain, gathering dust, and a swath of sunlight spills into the room, warming the austere air and gloomy furniture.

Feeling perhaps adventurous, and possibly wishing for an early death, the biggest eyesore in his life throws himself at the ledge, yanking it up and letting the air waft in.

It smells faintly of watered bean plots, wet dirt and mulch baking under mellow sunlight, and the smile Kiba beams at him when he turns around to pop a thumbs up to Shino smells faintly of lilies in early bloom. 

  
  


“About the lotus viewing,” he looks out into the setting sun, feeling the break fully settling in his bones. “When is it?”

“Well it ended like, yesterday night,” Kiba muses, “but I can take you tomorrow morning, early tomorrow morning, if you still want to see the lanterns?”

“Sure,” he adjusts his glasses, “thank you, Kiba-kun.”

Kiba hides the laugh as he flips his hood back onto his head and walks back with Akamaru, two shadows melting into one along the dirt road. 

  
  


“I didn't think you would let me walk you here,” Kiba notes, as they stroll down the pier, lotus closing on both of their sides. 

There is a floating market, rinsing their products and bartering prices, illuminated by the floating lanterns drifting along the moving water. 

“I want to take back what I said so badly,” he rolls his eyes, even as he allows Kiba to list towards him. “Why are the lanterns lit still? It's early morning.” 

“We're celebrating the life of our ancestors,” Kiba points to one lantern being drifted to the air. “And praying for luck for our loved ones at sea,” the man drops to his knees, extending his hand out to the receding water under the decking they stand on. 

Shino  _ ahhs,  _ bending down also to crouch by Kiba's side. 

“Should we get a lantern too? The winter was awful, and nothing was blooming much. I want to pray for a plentiful harvest this year,” he murmurs to the water lapping at the opening lotus petals. 

“In a bit,” Kiba bumps a shoulder into his, gazing out into the water. “Watch the sunrise for now. Today’s the first.”

“First of what,” he looks forward at the sky, and back at Kiba.

There is a smile in the blooming lotus in the water and the rising sun in the clouds. The lanterns drift on, framing them in a ring of heavenly fire. 

**Author's Note:**

> also i am big mdzs loser and i was writing this while reading about yunmeng bros so uhhhh the lotus pier is not a mistake it was put in there on purpose 
> 
> find me on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/hozukitofu) and [cc](https://curiouscat.me/jenny_benny)! i have a writing [twitter](https://twitter.com/jayjem_jam) if anyone is interested in more bs or we can just vibe in the void together


End file.
